Is Leadership Training Worth It?

Now that we’ve identified multiple areas where there really is room in the budget to invest in leadership development, let’s answer a more important question: Is Leadership Training REALLY Worth It?

Several years ago, I was with a friend of mine who owns a construction company when a few of the guys on one of his crews were just hammering him about how much time they could save the next time they had to do a certain task if they’d get them this fancy new tool. Truth be told, they were absolutely correct. The tool they were asking for had potential to help them get that particular task done much faster on every project, but it carried a fairly hefty price tag at nearly $1,000. My friend decided it was a worthwhile investment and purchased it for them. I was with him again a few weeks later when he mentioned that this crew was about to do that task for the first time since he had purchased the tool and he was headed about to see it in action. Since I had some time in my schedule that day, and I’ve worked around the construction industry for most of my life, I asked to ride along. 

You’ll never believe what we found when we arrived at the jobsite… The crew was almost done with the task but had yet to take the new tool out of the box! I supposed that saved a bit of wear & tear on the fancy new tool but it sure didn’t have much impact on the amount of labor they used to perform the task… To say my friend was frustrated would be quite the understatement; he was pissed!

Here’s the thing… When we purchase a physical product and someone chooses not to use it, we can see that right away. But how often have we paid for a team member to attend ANY type of training, only to have them come back to work and do the exact same thing they were doing prior to the training? Let’s be honest, it happens all the stinking time - regardless of the topic. With leadership training, or really anything that seems to fall into the soft skill category, it tends to be even more difficult to recognize whether or not there’s any real tangible impact. 

I sat in on a webinar recently addressing the potential for active threats in the workplace. (This topic had previously been referred to as “active shooter” but there are far more methods being used for workplace violence than just firearms so the term seems to be evolving.) One comment that rang true was that so many organizations click through a few slides and change a company policy they found online to include their own organization’s name, then call it good. I’ve seen that done more times that I can count when it comes to leadership training! In fact, a company asked us to help them do that recently; swing by and talk for a few minutes so they can make sweeping changes in their culture… That approach won’t help in an active threat situation and it won’t help build strong leaders either!

As I dug through several articles on this topic, I found one on Forbes.com called If You Think Leadership Development Is A Waste Of Time You May Be Right that called out all those folks who are only willing to check a box but seem to think their approach should deliver results. Interestingly enough, that article went on to detail several things we can do to make sure our investment into developing our leaders does indeed provide a return.

Who & How Support the Why…

When the organization I worked for started the initial rollout of a new safety initiative in 1998, everyone being trained to participate in even the basics of the process went through a three day workshop. The folks who were to be part of the “steering committee” went through an additional week of training so they’d understand how to run reports, analyze data from this new approach, and develop action plans based on what they found. By the time I became responsible for overseeing the entire process just a few years later, anyone we trained to participate in the behavioral observation process received just two days of introductory training, which we were later required to reduce to a day and a half, and any new members of that steering committee learned on the fly without any formal training at all. Over time, I figured out ways to work through those limitations and still achieve the results I was tasked with but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t an uphill battle…

Quite honestly, maintaining even that much time in the training cycle for folks involved in the process was pretty miraculous; a select few management team members were staunch supporters and we were achieving measurable results. Nearly every other new approach to changing the culture in that facility in any way suffered a far different fate. Whether it was tied to quality, process improvement, or even developing the personnel in supervisory or management roles (notice I didn’t refer to them as leaders), I don’t remember any of the “training” consisting of anything more than reading directly from a handful of PowerPoint slides before passing around a sign-in sheet and sending everyone back to work - to keep doing exactly what they had been doing…

If we were pressed to show whether or not any of that training was worth it, especially the little bit that was labeled as leadership training, I believe nearly everyone involved at any level - with the possible exception of the person delivering the training - would respond with an adamant NO! And if we pressed those trainers hard enough, I’d guess they’d eventually concede as well… They weren’t stupid, but they couldn’t openly admit that it was a complete waste of time!

While the amount of time we dedicate to teaching our team anything new matters, especially those with leadership responsibility, there are a few things that we have to consider if we want to ensure we’re doing more than checking some box and we achieve tangible results. 

I have no doubt that you’ve been through those training sessions where someone reads directly from the slides. I won’t bother asking for a response as to how effective you think that is… But how about the sessions where the individual delivering the material has no relevant experience whatsoever? Even if they’ve been able to memorize a few sentences that aren’t on the slides, they still have no real idea as to how what they’re sharing ties back to anything you’re dealing with… And what about someone who does have some experience but has managed to alienate nearly everyone in the group? I haven’t seen that drive exception results either…

For the majority of people I’ve ever known, worked with, or even trained personally, being competent in the subject matter and earning at least a little bit of influence by developing a personal connection are defining factors in whether or not the least bit of the training being provided is received. Remember that know/like/trust thing? It applies here too… But even then, regardless of the time slot (which we’ll circle back to later), any training delivered is really only the starting point. 

John Maxwell defines The Law of Process, chapter three in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, by saying that “Leadership is developed daily, not in a day.” With that in mind, let’s look at what we absolutely have to do in any initial training to have even the slightest expectation of seeing results!

Ensuring the Right Fit

If we need measurable results from anything we do to develop our leaders, and I can’t think of any reason for doing it if those results don’t matter, who delivers the initial training and how they go about it is critical! If they can’t earn credibility with our team or they’re just spewing something out that they read from a book on the way there, the juice won’t likely be worth the squeeze. But that’s not all we need to consider to make sure any leadership training we provide our folks is important, we need to be sure we’re giving them tools they can actually use…

I’ve been through more training over the last two decades than anyone I know; a fair amount of that related to safety and human resources but enough focused on leadership and communication to choke a goat! I often share about the expectation the manager I worked for had of me to show a tangible return from any training he allowed me to participate in. Couple that with the fact that I paid for nearly all of the leadership and communication training I attended out of my own pocket, I’ve always made sure I could pull something very specific from every single session - even if it was something I should never do when I shared material with an audience…

Through all that, I’ve seen some truly dynamic presenters who get the crowd so hyped up that they’re jumping and screaming. All too often though, I’ve walked away from those sessions with a high level of excitement but absolutely nothing that I can apply in my own area of responsibility. I’ve also sat through DAYS of consecutive sessions covering some of the most useful ideas you could imagine, but by the time I got back to my desk I had so many things piled up that I could barely breathe. And then there’s the ones where I was able to write down all kinds of impressive statistics and powerful quotes, then struggled to translate any of it to the workload I was faced with.

Don’t get me wrong, I think most of that has a place. That Forbes article I’ve referenced a few times leading up to this point cited a study from 2012 that “found that American companies spend almost $14 billion annually on leadership development training” and I can only assume that the number has increased quite a bit since - simply from the 7.5% inflation…

Here’s where I need you to pay close attention… If we want a real return on any of the investment we make into developing the people on our teams with leadership responsibility, or anyone else we’d like to see accept that responsibility in the future, we need to make sure we’re providing something that they can digest and apply in a way that leads to real behavioral change rather than just some notes on a sheet of paper. We’ve also got to be sure that it fits reasonably well with all the other demands we’ve placed on them. And that’s just the starting point!

As we move forward in our next page like this, we’ll work through some of the specific steps we can take to do this and we’ll look at how we can expect to see the results show up in our organization’s bottom line…